Step 2: Visit your sister and join her Korean BBQ party until 1am two nights before race day.

Step 3: Under-estimate the net downhill course. Note to self: "net downhill" doesn't mean there won't be any killer rolling hills along the way. The latter half of the course near the waterfront also had strong headwinds.

Step 4: Have blindly optimistic expectations that you will be racing at a much faster pace than your training runs on an familiar course.

And here's the proper way: :P

The nerdy breakdown of the destruction can be found on the race site: click here for RunPix info.

While I was in Toronto, it was nice catching up with a couple of UBCTC friends Matt Reeve and Kyuwon. I still had two weeks to kill while visiting my sister, so I decided to take up the CityPass and checkout some of the other attractions. The marathon was just a tact on...obviously. :)

Thursday, May 8, 2014

It wasn't pretty but I got to say it's nice to finally break the sub 39 barrier and new PB. Looking back on it, of course I was aiming for sub 39 and was satisfied with the result despite being only a second or two off from not making it. Yes yes I need to do more track workouts...sigh but at least the running gods and goddesses are fair to me. :)

What was my strategy this time?

Simply brute force as hard as you can from the start line and then let the stronger runners do the heavy lifting and carry you to the finish (approved by a trusted friend Mike McMillan). Pacing was not important, this wasn't a marathon. And besides my weak excuse was my lungs were the bottleneck point anyways. This was a good test for the Toronto Marathon the week after.

How did it unfold?

It was nice bumping into a good friend, Chris Yee. He asked me at the start line what was my goal, and I blurred out sub 39 even though this was really a B-race for me. Chris has improved his fitness greatly and I was happy to keep up for the first few km (he's behind the Ryan Kesler look-alike in the picture below).

At around km 5 just before the Burrard bridge crossing before the elevation gain, I was breathing heavily and I started slowing down.

It was a small pack to run with because the main pack of "heavy lifters" were already gone and started 6 minutes earlier gun time (see same picture below).

In the remainder kilometres I was yo-yoing so to speak with a few runners. I was on pace for sub 38 minutes but saw that bank time evaporating quickly. It was a very positively heavy split (hey I warned it wasn't pretty already).

At the Cambie bridge crossing, I thought I had this guy (in green top in same picture below, last reference I promised) at 9km as I passed him. But I was wrong, he opened a few seconds gap to bring it home. I was happy he beat me because he truly earned it. I apologize in advance for the graphic imagery but will share anyways...I wanted to express my gratitude to this stranger for a great race but had to awkwardly walked away because his "breakfast was also all over the road", so to speak. I'm a terrible person.

A great find from a couple friends, courtesy of the Vancouver Sun website.